


At the Still Point of the Turning World

by Nokomis



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Crossover, Doppelganger, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 08:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only real thought that Stiles has is that he can't let his father see her, this woman who somehow is and isn’t his mother. (Welcome to Night Vale crossover)</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Still Point of the Turning World

**Author's Note:**

> This is a crossover with Welcome to Night Vale that I couldn’t stop thinking about. Set post-3A for Teen Wolf, with no real spoilers for Night Vale, except for the fact that doubles sometimes exist. Title from Eliot. Huge thanks to Lielabell for looking this over for me!

_She goes to the house where her other lives, and attacks the first person she sees, only it's not the other. It's someone else, a boy who resembles her enough to be family, whose eyes go wide like he's seeing a ghost when he actually looks at her, after she stops attacking._

_"Mom?" he says shakily, and looking on the shelves, the walls, everywhere, she sees pictures of herself in the future, a future that exists only in the past, aging on the walls. Holding a baby. Smiling with a man she's never met. Wearing scarves around her head and then, finally, disappearing altogether._

_She is too late. Her double has already been murdered, but not by her hand. She feels suddenly, wildly, bereft._

*  
The only real thought that Stiles has is that he can't let his father see her.

The woman isn't his mother. Can't be; his mother has been dead for eight years. But she has his mother's eyes and his mother's voice, for all that she's younger than his mother was in his memories.

"How long?" she asks, voice sharp with something darker than fear. "How long has the imposter been dead?"

"You're the imposter," he tells her. "You're the one wearing my mother's face. What are you?"

She laughs at that, and it's like a shot to the gut for Stiles. He hasn't heard that sound in so long. "I'm Claudia, and the thing that you knew stole my life."

*  
She has a story: there was a glow cloud, and later, importantly, a sandstorm, and then impenetrable darkness. She emerged blearily with her singular mission in mind: kill her double.

But Stiles isn't her double, and her rage seems to seep out of her as she absorbs the fact that _she is alone_ and her double is dead.

He only starts to truly panic once the madness fades from her and her resemblance to his mother is truly evident. They have the same everything: smile, laugh, sense of humor, even speech patterns. Her life diverged from his mother's just as she moved away to Beacon Hills, just as she was meeting Stiles' dad, and she accepts the idea that time moved differently for her with barely more than a shrug.

"I was in the darkness," she says. "It does things."

Stiles doesn't know what to do.

*

He can't let his dad see her until he's positive she's not evil -- he can still feel the sharpness of her nails as she dug her hands into his throat, when she attacked him on sight. He's not entirely sure the Sheriff could handle the double of his dead wife, not after so much has gone wrong in recent memory.

Scott's house is out, because Melissa is great but she's also pretty damn loyal to his father. It's usually a trait he admires, but today it's a liability. The problem is clearly supernatural; Stiles knows he needs to go to someone with knowledge.

He drives slowly past the vet’s clinic, but the lights are off, and no cars are there. Stiles realizes abruptly that he doesn’t know where Deaton lives, doesn’t know anything about how Deaton spends his time outside of his job. Clauda gives him a sideways glance as she adjusts and readjusts her seat belt. 

Stiles weighs his options. Lydia is who he trusts most, but she doesn’t have the expertise Stiles needs. Doesn’t have a lifetime immersed in the knowledge that things that shouldn’t exist, do.

He goes to Derek's loft. He doesn't know what else to do, with Scott and Deaton ruled out of the equation. 

Claudia looks around like everything is strange and a little horrific, but she brightens when Derek answers the door. "Hi there, sailor," she says, breezing in like she belongs, and Stiles can only cast an apologetic look as he ducks under Derek's arm to follow her in. He remembers with violent clarity that his mother would do similar things: she would flirt outrageously, would feel perfectly at ease anywhere. 

"I need help," Stiles says, before realizing that both Peter and Cora are in the living room. They're watching Claudia with identical disdainful looks, as she picks up a book that is laying on the table and leafs through it.

“Looks like it,” Peter says. “Where’d you find her?”

“She’s…” Stiles’ voice trails off. She isn’t his mother, and he has no idea what she truly is. He doesn’t continue the sentence.

“They aren’t human,” Claudia says calmly, looking around the room. Stiles doesn’t know how she could tell, but he just nods.

“Never have been,” Peter says in that light tone he likes to use when saying something he thinks is shocking, flashing his eyes at her.

Claudia doesn’t back up, doesn’t react with fear. Stiles wonders, for the first time, about the place his mother had come from.

He remembers, faintly, visiting there when he was young, though he thinks most of the memories have been replaced with scenes from fantasy shows he watched while he was there. Maybe Night Vale really had been as terrifying and fantastic as he remembered.

Stiles just looks at her, and says, “She shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re the one who shouldn’t be here,” Claudia says without pause. “I was supposed to kill the imposter.”

Her voice takes a strange tone when she says that, like it’s… like it’s fucking programmed in her. “Who told you that you were supposed to kill her?”

The Hales all are watching avidly. 

“I just know,” Claudia says. “It’s the most important thing in the world, to kill her.”

“But she’s already dead,” Stiles says. “She’s been dead for years.”

They’ve already covered this ground, but this time, he sees how lost she is.

“Who’s been dead?” Cora asks. 

Stiles turns his attention to the Hales and asks, “What do you know about doppelgangers?”

Derek shrugs. Cora looks confused.

And Peter looks… Peter looks like he’s been handed a gift. “It takes a lot of magic to create one.”

“I wasn’t created,” Claudia says testily. “I’ve always existed. She was the one who was created.”

“Then how was she older than you, if she was the new one?” Stiles points out. He can only look at Claudia for so long, then he has to avert his eyes and stare at the walls or floor or anything that isn’t his dead mother, brought to life with murder in her thoughts.

“I was delayed,” Claudia says, which explains nothing.

“Why are you with Stiles?” Derek asks, looking between them like they’re a puzzle to solve.

“The imposter gave birth to him,” Claudia says. There’s a certain coldness in her words, though her tone is light enough, and Stiles realizes for the first time that the strangeness of this is affecting her, too. She can’t be much older than twenty, and the only person she knows is the teenage son of someone she thinks stole her life.

“I really need you to tell me what to do,” Stiles says. He looks at Derek, and then cuts his eyes to Peter. If anyone would know, it’s Peter. “I can’t let my dad see her.”

*

Peter claims not to know anything about mysterious doubles, but Stiles keeps pushing. Cora moves in closer to Claudia, softly asks her questions, and Stiles wants to abandon his line of inquiry to hear what they have to say to each other, but knowledge is more important.

Derek is very quiet, watching them all like they’re performing some sort of impenetrably complex play.

Finally Peter looks at Claudia and says, “It probably won’t work, but we could try to look into your memories. See if we could figure out where you came from.”

“No.” She doesn’t hesitate. “I know where I came from.”

“You might,” Stiles says, watching her narrowly, “but we don’t know if you’re evil or not, and it’s not like you’re going to come out and tell us.” He pauses. “Are you?”

She looks at Stiles with approval for the first time, and his breath catches in his throat. “I’m not, but there’s no reason you should believe me.”

In the end, the werewolves are no help. They so rarely are.

*

“Are you going to leave?” Stiles asks when they reach the Jeep. 

Claudia trails her fingers along the doorframe thoughtfully. “No.”

“But there’s nothing for you to do here,” Stiles says pushes. He isn’t sure, really, why he wants to hear her say it, why he wants this woman to tell him that Beacon Hills means nothing to her, that _he_ means nothing to her. It’s suddenly, desperately important. “Nothing. You’re too late, and the life you wanted to steal has slipped past.”

She opens her mouth to argue – the expression is familiar, it’s one he makes himself – but the words die on her lips. It’s as though it’s dawning on her that Stiles might be important to her, that learning about the life that she wanted to steal might be important, and she says carefully, “Then I want to learn about what might have been.”

She smiles at him faintly, and that’s when he can’t hold on anymore. It’s too much, and he finds himself gasping for breath, sitting on the pavement, leaning against the wheel of his Jeep. And she’s there, murmuring soft things, the kind of things his mother had always said to him. It’s okay. They cannot get you here. Safety is not a guarantee but right now you are fine.

He closes his eyes, and for a long, wonderful moment, he’s seven years old, and he has a mother, and everything is perfect.

*

In the end, he’s always known what he has to do. 

He pulls into his driveway slowly. The Sheriff’s car is there, and he can see a light on in the kitchen. Stiles takes a deep breath, looks over at Claudia.

She is drumming her fingers on the armrest, and he wonders if she’s anxious. If she’s curious about the man her… other self… loved and married and spent her life with.

If she might feel… Stiles shakes his head. That way lies madness, he knows. This Claudia isn’t his mother, and he’s not getting his family back.

“Let me go in first,” he says, because he wants to ease the shock as much as possible. Claudia nods once, and gets out, standing by the Jeep and staring at the Sheriff’s car with avid curiosity.

His dad is making dinner, at least, he’s taking dinner out of a takeout bag, and Stiles watches for a while. What he’s going to say is going to shatter something within his father, he knows, is going to break free some of the pain that’s lingered since the day his mother came out of that meeting with her doctor, weak-kneed but determined to be strong.

His father eventually glances back, says, “Gonna stand there all day, or are you going to help?”

Stiles pulls a salad out of the fridge as he says carefully, “Someone came by today.”

“That’s nice and vague,” his dad says, more interested in foil-wrapped food than Stiles’ revelation.

“She looks like Mom, but she’s not.” Stiles can think of no way to soften the blow of the statement.

The Sheriff falters. “She…?”

“She’s from the place Mom was,” Stiles says, and that’s explanation enough, from the way his father’s features tighten.

It reminds him of the look just after Stiles told him about werewolves, in the second before he started to deny it all. Stiles was right, and those dusty vacations in his mother’s hometown take on a strange new light.

“And she…”

“She is her,” Stiles says, “Only different. Younger, and she…” No way to explain it delicately. “She came to kill Mom, and was really disappointed that she was too late.”

“Does she want to kill anyone else?” The Sheriff’s voice is calm, but his hands are shaking as he balls up the empty takeout bag and throws it in the recycling bin.

“Not so far,” Claudia says from the doorway. 

“Fair enough,” his dad says faintly, looking at Claudia like all the light had just come back into the world.

“She’s not Mom,” Stiles says fiercely, wanting to protect his dad. He’s not seen his father’s face this open since before his mother died.

He doesn’t think his father wants to hear his words.

*

Claudia keeps skirting away from the Sheriff. 

Stiles thinks that the raw emotion on the Sheriff’s face, in his voice, in the way he constantly watches her is too much. She haunts their house, staying up late, thumbing through the photo albums that his mom would painstakingly put together, the ones that have gathered dust because they’re too painful to look at.

“What will you do?” his dad asks, though Stiles knows that what he wants to ask is, “Will you stay?”

If she did, it would be a terrible thing in just as many ways as it would be a wonderful thing. He hopes that she doesn’t. Hopes that she doesn’t stay and give his father the false hope that his Claudia is back.

Because she _is_ just like his mother, in everything but age and experience, and Stiles… Stiles is pretty sure that his father isn’t thinking clearly. Isn’t thinking about what it would do to this Claudia, to constantly live in the shadow of a woman she can never be. Will never be.

That she wanted to destroy.

Claudia never answers him, just looks at them both with faraway eyes.

*

One morning, Stiles wakes and she’s gone.

She leaves nothing behind but a crumpled map, with a route drawn in a suspicious rusty brown ink. There is no town marked at the end of the line, but it diverges from the cold blue lines to a crooked winding path that she’s labeled ‘I-800’, and ends abruptly in the middle of what the map insists is empty desert.

Stiles folds it up, considers showing his father.

Then he goes outside and places it under the driver’s seat of his Jeep, firmly tucked against the metal springs so it can’t get lost. He’s going to go back, one day. Claudia has made sure that he won’t lose his way.

He’s not sure, exactly, what he needs to find there, only that he knows he must.


End file.
